Has your husband ever decided to change your car oil an hour before you need to go to bed?
I get up around 5 am most workdays, so I crash pretty early to make sure I get enough Z’s. Because of my strict schedule, I have limited hours when I come home from work, which I either use working on my writing biz, wrapping up some teaching stuff, or just surfing the web while my husband sits on the couch watching television.
Not this night.
No, while I was trying to add on some last-minute touches to computer work, getting ready to call it a night and enjoy my last hour of awake time, my husband strolls into the office.
“I think I’m going to change your car’s oil.”
He had that spark in his eye, the gleam that spoke of project energy, despite the fact the sun had already set.
I tried to appeal with logic. “You know sometimes things go awry and you end up staying up all night. Plus I need the car in the morning and I can’t have something go wrong with it or you lose a piece and I can’t take my car.” I did not want to drive his million-mile car.
He smiled at me. “I have a new tool that will make it go smoothly and with no mess.”
There is was—the reason for this late-night adventure. He added, “It just came in the mail.”
But does it work?
So he went and changed the oil while I finished up, and to his credit, it didn’t take long and created minimal mess. He’d bought a pump vacuum system from Amazon that allowed him to suck the oil from the top of the car so he didn’t have to go underneath to do the oil change. This caused much less stress on his back, especially since he had his back surgery last November. There were no oil pans under the car, no big oil messes; really the biggest mess was changing out the oil filter.
The tool that saved us a messy headache:
Here’s the tool he used on Amazon on the left below: Four Uncles Oil Changer Vacuum Fluid Extractor. Apparently, it’s pretty popular. When I first started writing this post it was out of stock and currently, there is now one in stock. However, there is another, almost identical one (I had my husband confirm this) but is just a different brand, the Aocoom 6.5 Liter Oil Changer Vacuum Transmission Fluid Extractor, that is listed below on the right. If the pictures don’t load in your browser you can click on the highlighted names of the products above (the links will take you to the listings as well).
By the time I was done with my computer work he’d wrapped everything up and told me I was good to go. “Thank you,” I told him while he put away his new tool.
He grinned again. “Now I can do late-night projects whenever I want.”
“Don’t push it,” I said, having flashbacks to when he brought home trees for us to plant at nine o’clock at night.
What have you compromised on lately?
Side note:
No kitties were harmed in the making of this story; in fact they snoozed on my office futon while I worked and then joined us in bed once we’d both called it a night. I don’t think they cared at all about what went on that night. But Socks was delighted to get a new box to play with, so my husband left it in the study and now Socks has two boxes he is working on destroying.
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